


you should know by now that i’m broken, and i need your help

by TooManyGaysTooLittleTime



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, Established Triss Merigold/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerburg, Eventual Renfri | Shrike/Triss Merigold/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerburg, F/F, Mentioned Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Mentioned Stregebor (The Witcher), Past Abuse, Past Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Renfri | Shrike, Recovery, Yennefer and Triss run a horse therapy business
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:15:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26440243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooManyGaysTooLittleTime/pseuds/TooManyGaysTooLittleTime
Summary: Child star Renfri’s first scandal was at age 18, when she slept with one of the guards hired by her manager to keep her “safe”. Her name hasn’t been out of the papers since, and continuing trouble in her life has forced her to sink to ever deeper depths.Renfri is determined to pick herself up off the ground this time, and to that end has booked herself into a retreat. Yet what she finds there is not merely peace and healing, but—just maybe—love, as well.
Relationships: Renfri | Shrike/Triss Merigold/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerburg, Triss Merigold/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Kudos: 8





	you should know by now that i’m broken, and i need your help

**Author's Note:**

> title from biffy clyro’s “rearrange”, again
> 
> IM BAAAACK WITH MORE WITCHER FEMSLASH!! RENTRISSEFER STANS LEMME HEAR YOU
> 
> warning: this is pretty much completely unedited, read at your own risk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Renfri arrives at Merigold Retreats, encountering Triss Merigold and her wife Yennefer.

The car is a Ford, borrowed from one of Renfri’s friends in exchange for a hundred dollars stolen from a Walmart till. Although it’s old and in crap condition, it works well, and Renfri sees the sign for Merigold Retreats earlier than she had expected.

Worry makes her brow furrow and her driving unsteady as she turns off the road, indicator clicking, and she leans over the steering wheel, peering through as the windscreen wipers smear raindrops away from the glass. The landscape is gray from the rain and overgrown green fields run alongside the road. 

A driveway is approaching on her right, and Renfri slows down, noticing the sign advertising “MERIGOLD RETREATS: The Healing Power Of Nature!”. She flicks on the indicator again and twists the steering wheel, driving through the opened gate and into the drive. It’s peaceful, unoccupied, the empty parking spaces easing Renfri’s concern. She pulls into one, forwards rather than reversing in: Renfri doesn’t plan on leaving this place for a long while. Pulling out the key, she opens the door, and goes to the back to retrieve her luggage. There’s not a lot: a suitcase containing her clothes and a backpack holding the bare minimum of essentials. Renfri closes the back and locks the car, adjusting the strap of her backpack over her shoulder. 

It’s a longer walk than expected from the parking lot, upwards to the house, and Renfri’s cheeks are whipped by spatters of rain. By the time she raises her hand to knock on the door, her hair is darkened and plastered to one side of her face, and a shiver passes down her spine.

She hears a noise from inside, then the door is opened, and Renfri gets her first look at the owner of the place. The website hadn’t been particularly specific, giving their names as Mx and Mx Merigold, but Renfri sees that one of the Mx Merigolds is a woman a little shorter than her, with chestnut curls around her face and warm brown eyes. 

“The weather’s terrible today, isn’t it?” the woman says, casting a glance around outside. “Come on, let’s get you inside.” She steps back, allowing Renfri a better view of the inside of the house. It feels warm and homely, less formal than the other retreats Renfri had tried.

“Thanks,” Renfri says awkwardly, fiddling with the strap of her backpack. She doesn’t dare look the woman in the eye, sure that if she did, she would find herself flushing red. Renfri reminds herself that she is probably married, and that she didn’t start this retreat to be stared at by customers who still can’t forget about that one time they kissed Princess Pavetta of Cintra at an after party. (In her defence, Pavetta was extremely pretty, and Renfri was extremely drunk.) 

“I didn’t introduce myself, sorry,” the woman apologises. “I’m Triss Merigold, and I and my wife Yennefer run this place.”

Married. She’s married, Renfri chastises herself, already feeling guilty. “Renfri,” she replies, closing the door behind her.

“No last name?” she frowns.

“No,” Renfri answers, feeling exceptionally awkward under Triss’s scrutiny. “My parents—I didn’t know them,” she explains. “They died a short while after my birth. I don’t know my last name. Str—my manager dropped the surname early.”

“Like Beyoncé, then,” Triss says. 

“A bit, yeah,” Renfri agrees wryly. She drops her bag to the floor, the heavy books inside falling with a loud clunk. Renfri had read that retreats were supposed to allow you to become more in touch with your academically intelligent side, or some shit like that, and to that end had bought several thick classic lit books to read.

Triss winces, but smiles. “What’s in there? Bricks?” she asks jokingly.

“Nah, Wilde and Woolf.” She laughs at her shitty joke for a moment before sobering up and replying “I’m tryna, you know—,” Renfri gesticulates awkwardly to try and get her point across. “Read more, be a born-again intellectual. Whatever.” 

“Well, I’ll show you to your room,” Triss says after a pause. When Renfri moves to pick up her bag, Triss does it for her, waving Renfri’s offer of help away. “You just follow me.”

Triss leads her up the stairs, the carpet soft under Renfri’s muddy sneakers. She feels awkward, strange in this new environment.

Renfri knows how to fit in around her gang. Renfri knows how to fit in around other actors. She knows how to fit in around her normal life—as much as her life could be considered normal. This place, however? She’s got no clue.

“Here we are!” Triss announces good-naturedly. She opens the door and gestures inside. “This is your room. Let me know if you need anything changed.”

Renfri peers in. It’s well-appointed, and homely rather than overly professional. Pictures of Triss and another woman are arranged about the room, and Renfri feels as if she’s intruding on a shrine of some kind. There aren’t any shiny brochures saying made-up shit about the place, no fancy logos, and that makes her a little more relaxed and simultaneously less at ease.

Triss deposits Renfri’s bags on the floor with a thump. “I’ll be downstairs, if you need anything. Dinner is served at seven. Be in the main hall by then.”

“Okay,” Renfri responds. Triss smiles and pats her reassuringly on the shoulder before leaving Renfri to herself.

While Renfri had originally planned to spend the time reading—she did mean it when she said she planned to get clean for real this time—the moment she sits on the bed, tiredness sweeps over her. This entire thing is draining, so draining. She leans down to undo her shoes and kick them off, before lying back, relieved, on the bed and falling asleep.

* * *

“Look who’s decided to join us!” Triss smiles from the dinner table, eyes bright in the candlelight.

Yennefer looks up from her food to see their newest client enter the dining room. They’ve got thick, messy hair cut to just above their shoulders, hanging over their eyes and face, and wear dark jeans with a t-shirt for some rock band. Despite the ‘welcoming atmosphere’ that Triss had proclaimed the candles created, they still loiter reluctantly in the doorway.

“Come in,” Yennefer says, attempting to copy her wife’s friendly tone. They do so, pulling out a chair and sitting down in front of the meal.

Once they’re seated and staring down at the plate, Triss begins the normal opening-night conversation starters. “I’m Triss Merigold—but you know that already—and this is my wife, Yennefer Merigold née Vengerburg.”

“Renfri,” they say sullenly. “‘M Renfri. Just the first name.”

Yennefer tries a smile. “We’re so glad to have you here, Renfri.”

She thinks she sees a smile appear at the corners of Renfri’s mouth. “I’m glad to be here at all.”

“Do you want to talk about anything?” Triss says gently, attempting to get Renfri to open up. “Or would you prefer to have a few days to acclimatise?”

Renfri drinks half the glass of wine. “Um, why not.” She sticks her fork into a potato and eats it off the end. “So,” she starts between bites, “you might have heard of me when I was younger. I was in that TV series, Butcher of Blaviken, playing the princess. Who gets brutally murdered.” Renfri throws them a sarcastic smile. “And, after that, I got big, Hollywood took notice. I was—nine, I think—when my old manager handed me over to my current one. That’s when things really went to shit.” Renfri drains the wine glass, and Triss silently refills it.

“He was out for my fucking _guts_. Hated me from the moment he set eyes on me. The feeling was mutual.” Renfri’s eyes are dark despite the candlelight. “I did so many fucking kiddie movies, don’t remember what half of them were. Then when I turned sixteen, I started getting the gory roles. The murder-y roles. I died a lot.” She’s serious now, all pretense of joking dropped. “Stregebor loved watching me die. Bastard saw me strangled, set alight, bled to death, you name it. It’s like he had a fetish for it, some messed-up shit like that.” Renfri takes a deep breath before continuing.

“The security team came in after one of my fans—girl named Marilka—snuck into my hotel room, I don’t know what for, and I put a knife to her throat. I was called dangerous, a madwoman. Stregebor insisted I had to be guarded every moment of the day. Thus, the security team.”

Yennefer feels as if she’s watching all this play out in reverse. She’s seen it all before and is now watching with an aura of detachment. Triss, however, is gripping the handle of her fork tightly in concern.

“Took months before I finally cracked his façade. Strong, burly, basically every jock you’ve ever seen. Silver hair—that was the memorable bit.” She pauses to breathe. “I flashed him, one night after some event. Completely on accident. But his lips went tight and he looked away, and I finally knew how to get out.”

“They probably say I was a seductress, or something. I wasn’t. Just took any advantage I saw. Anyways, I did the thing. I slept with him. I was seventeen, he was in his forties. Can you fucking believe that?” Renfri presses a hand to her forehead. “I’m sorry. I went too far... I don’t want to talk about it any more.”

Triss nods. “Why don’t you finish your food, dear,” she says, and the rest of the evening passes in silence.

* * *

The fact that the retreat was located on a farm with a generous estate had been a wonderful surprise earlier that morning, when Yennefer had led her out to introduce her to the horses there.

“They’re therapeutic,” the other woman had explained, stroking a hand through one’s mane. “Our clients find it easier to talk to the horses, at least initially.”

“I haven’t ridden in years,” Renfri had said, wondering at the gentle eyes of the horses. When she had turned to Yennefer with a question on her tongue, she had seen the same kindness in Yennefer’s eyes.

“Of course you can,” Yennefer had replied, reading Renfri’s unspoken question. She had held a bridle out to Renfri, the nose-band encrusted with rhinestones. “Do you still remember how to work with tack?”

Now, midway through the morning, Renfri is up on the peak of one of the hills, following a trail that skirted the edge of the estate. It had started to rain a while ago, a light mist pouring down upon them, and Renfri’s jeans are soaked through and heavy upon her legs.

She pauses, gazing down at the landscape, but her thoughts are far away. Renfri tugs on the reins to stop the horse from moving and considers the women in the house.

She is sure that if she had come earlier in her life, say, at eighteen when her face first started appearing in tabloids, that Triss and Yennefer would have treated her like their substitute daughter. She is twenty-five now, though, and feels thousands of years older than that besides. And she’s no stranger to desire, the skin-burning, fiery type that sears you deep inside.

The relationship between the other two women, however, is a kind of familiar love that Renfri wishes, with all her heart, she can have. It’s more than rushes fucks in a bathroom, more than kisses stolen in the back of cars, more than anything that Renfri has experienced before. Seeing them happy, together, fills her with a strange mix of jealousy and sadness. 

The horse dips its head down to nibble on the grass, and Renfri yanks it back up, kicking her heels into its flanks. Underneath her, the saddle is slick with the rain, and it squeaks when Renfri moves in it.

“Fuck you, move,” she mutters at the horse. It does so, starting off back down the track, taking her to return to the house and Triss and Yennefer.

* * *

Yennefer pushes Triss down onto the bed, shifting to sit back on her hips. Her weight is comforting, reminds Triss that their home is in each other, it has always been in each other. Beneath the curtain of black hair hanging over Yennefer’s face, her lips are parted and heat up when Triss pulls herself up to kiss them again.

“I love you so goddamn much,” Triss whispers when Yennefer turns to reach for the strap-on, back twisted in order to open the drawer and pull it out. Yennefer echoes the sentiment back, barely audible beneath the sound of clothes being removed. 

“You want to wear it, or shall I?” Triss says as she reaches to unbutton her jeans. With Yennefer’s thighs wrapped around her hips, it is difficult to manoeuvre and pull them off, but she manages to shimmy out of them and kick the jeans to the floor. Doubtless they’ll be wrinkled come morning, but at the moment it doesn’t matter. All that matters is Yennefer’s body being slowly bared to Triss’s gaze, the air between them warming up with promise.

Yennefer leans down to kiss her again, and Triss feels the strap-on being pressed against her. The other woman pulls away, and Triss obligingly wraps the harness around her hips, lifting her body upwards to position it comfortably. It digs a little as Yennefer presses her down further, but she doesn’t mind it.

She knows that Yennefer prefers to be the dominant one: her submissive side is one that she rarely lets out, and it had taken a long time to build their relationship to the level where Yennefer could trust Triss to dominate her. Triss doesn’t mind as Yennefer positions herself above the strap-on, hands digging into Triss’s shoulders as she sinks down. 

“Yenna,” Triss whispers as Yennefer starts to raise herself up before sinking down again. Her thighs are warm and bare around Triss’s hips, and she sighs in pleasure, letting Yennefer take control as she rides Triss. 

She lifts a hand up from where it is beside her hip, twists her fingers with Yennefer’s in a tender gesture. Yennefer softens, eyes becoming less intense, and the room feels comfortably warm, the warmth of hearthfires and steaming food in the kitchen. When she raises her head to kiss Yennefer, slowly, gently, her wife tastes like sugar melting upon her tongue.

In that moment, Triss loves Yennefer so much that she is lost, floating adrift upon gentle currents.

“I love you, Yenna,” Triss murmurs, stroking a hand through Yennefer’s long, soft black hair.

Yennefer smiles back down at her, pausing her movement to run her hands through Triss’s hair. “And I you.”

“Triss? Wait, _shit_ —sorry, I’m so sorry!” Renfri pokes her head through the door before pulling it back, and even from an awkward angle Triss can tell her cheeks are flaming red. She blushes a little as she realises what Renfri must have seen.

Above her, Yennefer laughs, warm and deep. “Oh, dear.”

“Yeah,” Triss answers, turning her head into the pillow.

Yennefer grinds down onto the strap-on, body warm against Triss’s. Her movements tell Triss what she cannot through words: she’d enjoyed Renfri’s intrusion, liked the fact that Renfri had seen them.

Triss files that away mentally, thinking it a little odd, but lifting up her head to kiss Yennefer again and pushing her hips and the strap-on into Yennefer regardless.

**Author's Note:**

> if you like this dumpster fire, please leave kudos and/or comments. i have no cute way to ask for them, please just give me serotonin


End file.
